The euphoria that greeted the decision in December 1999 by the Council of Ministers of the European Union (EU) to grant Turkey the status of a candidate for full membership gradually dissipated during 2000, but the three-party coalition headed by Bulent Ecevit, leader of the centre-left Democratic Left Party, pushed ahead with its program of political and economic reforms. A threat to the government’s cohesion was removed when Ecevit’s coalition partner, the Nationalist Action Party, agreed on January 12 to await the decision of the European Court of Human Rights before asking the Turkish Grand National Assembly to ratify the death sentence passed on the Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan. In July the government was strengthened when Mesut Yilmaz, the leader of the third coalition party, the Motherland Party, entered the cabinet as a deputy prime minister after the Assembly had cleared him of accusations of administrative impropriety. Yilmaz was put in charge of the process of meeting the “Copenhagen criteria,” the political and economic reforms required by the EU before the beginning of formal membership negotiations. The EU had earlier criticized the arrest of the mayors of the three main cities of the Kurdish-inhabited region, but the matter was resolved when the mayors were released on February 28 after a week in prison. Controversy then arose over the sentence of one year’s imprisonment passed on March 10 on Necmettin Erbakan, the former leader of the banned (Islamic) Welfare Party. The sentence was confirmed on appeal, but a stay was granted until January 2001 as the government began the process of amending the law under which Erbakan was sentenced for an allegedly inflammatory public statement.

Prime Minister Ecevit failed in his attempt to give Pres. Suleyman Demirel a second term of office when a constitutional amendment to that effect was rejected by the Assembly on April 5. Ecevit then put forward Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the president of the Constitutional Court, who was supported by the leaders of all the political parties represented in the Assembly. Sezer was elected president of the republic on a third ballot on May 5 and took office on May 16. He subsequently fell out with Ecevit during the Assembly’s summer recess when he vetoed two decrees, one facilitating the dismissal of public employees deemed to have been subversive and the second privatizing some government-owned banks.

The demand for a rapid purge of subversive civil servants, voiced by military commanders in the National Security Council, was intensified early in the year as a result of the discovery that some public employees had links with the Islamic terrorist organization Hezbollah, most of whose members were ethnic Kurds. Its leader, Huseyin Velioglu, was shot dead on January 17 when a safe house of the organization was raided in Istanbul. Nationwide searches revealed at least 60 bodies of people murdered by Hezbollah and buried in safe houses. As the controversy raged, President Sezer decided not to attend the Tehran summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization on June 10. Sezer made his first foreign trip as president on June 23 to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (recognized only by Turkey) and thereby stressed Turkey’s support for the Turkish Cypriots. In October Sezer visited the Turkic republics of Central Asia, an area where Turkish diplomacy was active throughout the year.

The government’s main efforts during the year centred on the reduction of inflation. The rise in the world price of oil and the decline in the value of the euro made it impossible to reduce consumer price inflation to 25% by the end of the year, as had been agreed upon with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). There was progress, however; consumer prices rose by 39%, as against 69% in 1999. In November a crisis of confidence hit the banking system and led to large-scale flight of capital. The situation was brought under control when the IMF granted credits in excess of $10 billion. The budget for 2001 continued the austerity policies initiated a year earlier. Nevertheless, two major projects were completed. In January the Ataturk airport in Istanbul acquired new large terminal buildings, and in September the nation’s first modern subway line was opened, also in Istanbul.